Today’s Photo Friday is entitled: Emotion

chosen by: Julie

Follow the links below for other entries (I will add links as entries come in!):

Tall chick tales 

 Idea jump! 

 Just for fun

 A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words

Blahblah Blog

When I knew that this week’s title was Emotion, I knew which photograph I had to use. It is a photographic portrait that I took during an incredibly emotionally difficult time of my life – when my best friend was terminally ill, dying of Malignant Melanoma that had metastasized to her bones.

Gilly was initially diagnosed as having this skin cancer in 1987. She had not had any symptoms and seemed fit and well. She had noticed a lesion on her back and had thought it was just a discoloured area of skin. To be on the safe side, she sought advice. A biopsy was carried out and the result led her to having the lesion removed from her back by surgery. Gilly attended regular follow ups for the next 5 years and all seemed well.

Then just over five years later, just when she though she was in the clear, it came back.

The symptoms revealed the disease to her this time – excruciating back pain that was sudden in onset and literally crippling. The doctor said pulled muscle, or slipped disc. But it got worse over a matter of days until she screamed if anyone came near her less they bump in to her. We guessed she was in trouble. We insisted on a second opinion.

After an MRI they gave her the verdict: The cancer had metastasized to her spine, hips and skull. They told her she had months to live. She lived for just three further months.

Gilly was very brave and faced her oncoming death head on. She talked it over with us all. I spent many agonising hours sat by her bed, going through what we thought would happen, what death would we be like, what the process of dying would be like, how she’d cope with pain, what her expectations were, how her children would cope, how her beloved partner would manage. We talked about it all. We wept about it all.

She asked me if I would do two very special things for her. Of course, I agreed.

She asked me to buy two sets of baby clothes for her grandchildren (as yet not even conceived) – a set for her son’s firstborn, and a set for her daughter’s firsborn. One of the things that made her extraordinarily sad was not knowing what would happen to her two children (both at university). What would they do after university? Who would they marry?  What grandchildren would there be? It grieved her that she would never see the unborn babies, never hold them in her arms. She asked me to hold them for her, on her behalf.

The day I went to buy those baby clothes is impressed upon my mind. I cried all the way there and when I pulled up outside the shop I thought I had managed to get my emotions under control; that was until the assistant asked me what I wanted. The poor girl stood there not knowing what to say or do, while I broke my heart in her shop, unable to speak between the sobs. She was patient until I was able to point to two little baby outfits and plonk the money on the counter – and run.

The second thing that Gilly asked me to do specifically, was to take a series of photos of her – so that her children and everyone would have a recent picture, after she died.

Gilly was very ill by this time. She was on morphine and was bedridden, but she insisted on getting up and into a chair for the photo. She put a warm cardigan on over her pyjamas and asked me to sort out her favourite earings to wear. (I have these earrings now as a keepsake – I don’t wear them lest I should lose them). Helping her get to the chair was agony; for her physically , and me emotionally. Every single movement was torture; she struggled to that chair on crutches (with a broken hip that couldn’t be repaired because it was too cancer ridden)

This is the last photo of Gilly – taken just a week before she died. You’d never guess looking at her lovely smile.

Gilly is smiling for her children and her unborn gandchildren. She is hiding her fear, her pain, the agony of getting into the chair, for her children and unborn granchildren. If it wasn’t for the blanket over her legs, you might not even know how near to death she was.

As you look at the photo, please remember one of the bravest women ever; a beloved daughter (she died before her own father), a dear and true friend, an adored mother, and a wonderful partner to Jeremy.  Her loss we still all feel on a daily basis. Life may go on, but it isn’t the same anymore.

Gilly RIP. I love you, and miss you.

Emotion: Gilly, a phenomenal woman and dear friend, remembered always.

Read more about Gilly here

“To live in the hearts of those you love is not to die.”

Gilly Plaskett- Broad  18th July 1944 – 7th March 1992.

Further information about Malignant Melanoma.

Future Photo Friday titles:

Friday 30th May : Title by CordieB: Phantasmagoria

Friday 6th June : Title by Author: Diptychs

(or Triptychs if you prefer to use 3 images)

(Diptychs – two is better than one! Tell a story in just two frames. Get creative. Think in pairs! The aim of diptychs / triptychs is to make an interaction between two / three photos in such a way that the whole work has a greater value than its components).